Solution Decanted

I am perched in a brackish chemical solution.

I hope it can clean my shoes. They are so speckled with grime. The light looks so beautiful from inside my test tube. I scratch the soles of my shoes with my fingernails, watching the cake like layers of filth strip themselves from my feet and float to the meniscus of my chemical bath. One of the starched-coat people should be along soon to decant the residue.

I was born here—my genes were twined in this test tube.

I reside here—an embryo saturated in untainted placenta.

I will die here—my body will meld into this imperturbable glass and I will no longer have grime on my soles and in the evening the glaring fluorescents above me will finally go out. The light keeps me healthy but I would sacrifice myself for a single night of impervious sleep.

I make my home in this lab. Minds more perfect than mine scuttle around above me—beetle like and almost raving mad. They repress themselves.

Scientific advancement will resuscitate our souls. It will fuse the broken ones. But for the dead ones…for the dead ones there is the greatest hope of all. They will take their final resting place upon their Petri dish sepulchers and they will have made the greatest and most noble sacrifice. They will have given themselves to sterility and that is true evidence of acumen in this world.

When I inhale the liquid fills my lungs and I drown—when I sink to the sandy bottom I will be cleansed. The abrasive granules will clean my shoes and when I take my final breath I will rise like a savior and my feet will be unsoiled and I will be pure.

Some of the white-coated men have peered into my glass and scribbled their graphite across their papers. I see the way they look at me. I know they see a fetid creature in me but when I leave here I will be perfect. My skin will have a soapy smell like theirs and my arms will be free to wave wildly and I will no longer be enervated by the pins in my arms or the liquids that run through the tubes into my body.

It is warm here—safe. If I purge my filthiness on my surroundings the cushioned walls remind me that I need not worry…that I am protected.

Sometimes I can see bars through my test tubes. They are beautiful—bulwarks erected to save me from my tarnish.

My shoes are encrusted with residue.

The men in the white coats are seraphim—though religion is strictly opposed here. Through the liquid of my tube I can sometimes hear their echoes. They say that someone named God does not exist in a place where there are people like me and the others who share my test tube rack. They say that if he did there wouldn’t be places like this.

I hope we have not been the cause. I would welcome a man named God if he were to come for me. Sometimes I get visitors but their outlines are blurry. For now I am alone and more imperfect than the others.

I walk towards catharsis in my tragedy here, but my sullied shoes make me feel like a disease.